It is necessary for an autonomous mobile apparatus to determine a moving direction of a person in order to move forward safely and effectively.
As a background art in the present technical field, there is JP 2007-229816 A (PTL 1). In PTL 1, a method for predicting a course of a pedestrian from a toe image is described. In the method, a pedestrian course model construction unit constructs a course model of a general pedestrian in advance by combining information of a toe image of a specific pedestrian and detected course information of the specific pedestrian, and a pedestrian course model storage unit stores information of the pedestrian course model.
Then, a pedestrian course prediction unit predicts a course of an unspecific pedestrian by collating information of a toe image of the unspecific pedestrian, which image is generated by a pedestrian toe image generation unit, and the information of a pedestrian course model stored in the pedestrian course model storage unit.
As a method to detect a course in construction of a pedestrian course model, it is described to detect a three-dimensional position of a pedestrian serially in certain time intervals and to detect the course of the pedestrian from a temporally change of the three-dimensional position.